


The Second Term

by thedevilchicken



Category: Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Community: smallfandomfest, First Time, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>President Asher takes a second term in office. This isn't quite what Mike signed up for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Term

“This is _not_ what I signed up for when I joined the Secret Service,” Mike says. 

Ben doesn’t suppose for one second that it was, of course, and Mike knows that. However, that’s not going to stop him from bitching, and Mike knows Ben knows that, too.

“You’d look pretty dashing if you’d stop lounging around and learn how to sit in a suit,” Ben says, and Mike shrugs as he grins and he lies there, stretched out on his front in his suit on the bed. It’ll be creased by the time he gets up but neither of them really give a damn whether Mike’s totally neat and tidy. Ben will go through a show of frowning at him and eyeing him and straightening his tie and his lapels just like he always does but it’s just that: it’s a show. Mike thinks maybe Margaret Asher used to do the same thing for Ben before she passed so he’s not going to grudge Ben doing the same for him. 

“It’s nearly time,” Ben says. He glances at him from the dresser where he’s putting on his tie; he’s put it on and taken it off, re-tied it three times now, while Mike’s been watching with a vague sense of amusement. He’s tried on three pairs of cufflinks and frowned at his shoes more than once. He’s not a vain guy, Mike knows that, so it’s not about just looking good on camera - it’s just that he wants this to be right. Mike’s privately not sure the right or wrong clothes are going to make all the difference but he’s willing to play along. “Are you ready?”

Mike flops heavily onto his back with a dramatic sigh. “I’ve been ready for an _hour_ ,” he says. They both know it’s an exaggeration but not by all that much. Ben gives him a withering glance in the mirror and Mike raises a brow. “Get your ass in gear, Asher. I’m not waiting around all day.”

The irony is, of course, that he probably would because it wouldn’t be the first time and not just while he was on the president’s Secret Service detail. And that, of course, is something else that they both know.

***

They’d been heading toward it for months before it happened. 

For a while, no one had been sure if Benjamin Asher would run for a second term in office. The White House attack had been a blow to the administration, there were several resignations and reshuffles, but opinion polls still showed high approval ratings - something about the US having a “bad-ass” president going over well with more than one demographic. But there was a question mark over Asher actually running again. 

Privately, Mike knew, there was also a question mark: Ben Asher didn’t know if he wanted to be president. Mike hung back by White House walls, invisible like all the Secret Service agents always were, and watched as the president tried to decide if he wanted to keep his job. He stood by doorways and overheard conversations he’d never discuss, went everywhere the president did because apparently Mike had no boundaries and no personal life and an overdeveloped sense of duty. He’d broken up with Leah by text from Air Force One, an ill-considered _I’m pretty sure we should divorce_ that she didn’t disagree with. He should’ve been surprised that she wasn’t surprised but they didn’t even argue about it. He wasn’t home enough for her to argue with, which he guessed was part of the problem. 

“He’s having nightmares.” Mike frowned at the agent just coming out of night duty who was handing over to him for the day shift, a new guy who Mike tried to get along with but instantly disliked. “The president. He’s having nightmares. Can we have a commander-in-chief with PTSD?”

“So vote for the other guy,” Mike said. And he got the agent transferred to the vice president’s detail three days later, but what he’d said stuck with him. 

Two days later, he pulled a double shift and sat outside the president’s bedroom all night long. Nothing, not a peep, not a single whisper was there from that room all night long. So he did it again a couple of nights later, then a couple of nights after that until one night, the fourth night, as he was pretty sure he was nearing the point of total exhaustion, there was a yell in the bedroom. 

He ran in, gun drawn, no clue what he was expecting except something in him was right back in that day when the White House fell, but the president was turning on the bedside lamp there on the nightstand, sitting up in bed. 

“Mr President?” Mike said, lowering his gun.

The president looked at him, sitting there in pyjamas sometime just past 3am and Mike realised he was expecting some kind of _presidential_ answer in spite of that. When President Asher just shrugged at him, he frowned. He holstered his weapon.

“Is everything okay, sir?”

“No,” the president said. 

Mike’s frown deepened. “Sir?”

 

“I have nightmares.” He sighed, resting back against the headboard, leaning his head back. “Pretty obvious, huh.” Mike was pretty sure the awkward look on his face was all the reply he needed to give. “You don’t?”

“Don’t what, sir?”

“Dream about it.”

Mike paused. He crinkled up his mouth, tucked his hands in behind him in some kind of attempt at a professional stance and he mulled the question over, mulled over his response. Did he wake up sweating like a jackass in the middle of the night, like maybe he’d been too late, like maybe he’d let the president die? Sure he did. That was pretty much the reason he was on duty more than he was off, more than any of the others. He guessed they had that in common.

He nodded sharply. “Sure I do,” he said. 

The president looked at him, paused for one long moment while he did so, and then returned the nod. They didn’t discuss it, he just picked up a file from the nightstand and he put on his glasses, still sitting there in bed. “Stop pulling doubles and get some rest, Mike,” he said, and glanced up briefly over the rims of his glasses. “Get back on days. And bring your gloves next time you’re in.” 

Mike frowned; the president put up his dukes with a quirk of his brows. Mike recovered quickly from the smile that threatened to spread. 

“Yes, sir,” he said, and he left the room. 

***

Two days later, they were in the ring and it was pretty much just like old times, Mike not-quite-politely handing the president his ass and the president taking it surprisingly cordially, jibes and jabs and laughter while he got in his day’s exercise. The day after that was the exact same thing, then the day after that and the day after _that_ until Mike realised he’d been coming in on his days off just to spar with the president at 5am like that was what counted as socialising in his screwed-up existence. He realised he’d missed it. Dumb as it sounded even to Mike, he’d missed the action _and_ the company. After all, Mike was pretty sure the presidential election was as much about charm as policy; Ben Asher was short on neither.

The third week, once they’d showered and Mike was ready to head home for what remained of his brief day off down-time, the president casually asked him to stay for breakfast while they were heading down a corridor back into the residence, glancing at him over the top of a folder the press secretary had just handed to him. Mike begged out of it, called rain check, said he had a date with a hockey game he’d recorded and a bowl full of nachos, breakfast of champions, but thank you Mr President. He practically fled the building. Jesus, if his boss found out he was getting all friendly with POTUS, she’d be handing him his ass on a platter. Problem was, he couldn’t shake the feeling and that feeling wasn’t, strictly speaking, 100% friendly while he tried not to glance at the president in the damn communal shower every morning. The guy was hot. And Mike was fucking up on a totally spectacular new level.

Air Force One headed out the next day and there was no time for boxing; Mike wasn’t sure if he was grateful for that or not as the plane took off from US soil and landed on French so many hours later because damn if the flight didn’t give him chance to venture into thoughts he was pretty sure could get him fired at the _very_ least. The hotel over there was fine, he got a couple of nights of French food and French wine and ogling French women with a couple of guys from the team and then there they were, in another conference room in another country and the president looked up at him. While the French president was speaking, he _looked up at him_ and all Mike’s good work in forgetting his decidedly impure thoughts was suddenly and unexpectedly undone. 

Mike glanced silently, unobtrusively around the room, at the other security agents up against the walls, French and English and American. Then he looked back at the president, who was _still_ looking at him, almost casually. Mike didn’t know where else to look but straight back at him like a deer caught in headlights but then the president spoke and he looked away and it was suddenly just like it had never happened, he was the invisible, anonymous Secret Service presence once again. At least he didn’t dream that night; he was too busy wondering what the hell was going on with him and his commander-in-chief, if it was real or all in his twisted little mind.

The president went jogging in the morning, like that was a normal thing for a national leader to do while on the job in Paris. The thin drizzle seemed to keep most of the paparazzi away as he jogged by the bank of the Seine, crossed the river, made a full circle back again toward the hotel. Mike jogged with him because that was his job, a few paces back and to the right so he could get easily to the gun that was chafing there in his shoulder holster if he needed to. Then the president stopped, by the river, leaning over a railing as he stretched and caught his breath. Mike joined him, a few feet away. 

“Should I run again?” the president asked, just a quick glance at Mike. 

“Sir, I’m pretty sure it’s not my place to--”

“Would you vote for me?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just took off again toward the hotel and Mike followed, wondering what the hell had just happened. 

Back in DC the next day. Sparring, but somehow something had changed. They didn’t laugh. The president wasn’t teasing him the way he’d gotten used to. They actually had a _fight_ in there. Then, after a shower, after the president had eaten and Mike had stood outside of the door for more than a half hour, after visits and phone calls and all the presidential bullshit he went through on a daily basis, the president went on TV and announced marriage equality to the nation. It was pretty goddamn gutsy, the way he phrased it, Mike had to admit. He was impressed.

He caught the president’s arm once they’d left the room, so far out of protocol it pretty much pained him as he did it. The president stopped, looked at him, raised his brows. 

“I’d vote for you,” Mike said. “If you ran again, I mean.”

The president just looked at him for a moment while all the others waiting for him, while the others just stood there stupidly and watched, Mike’s hand still on his arm. Then he smiled, a huge broad smile, and walked away. He announced the next day; Benjamin Asher was running for reelection. 

***

He was with him through the campaign, through late nights and early mornings, flights and meetings and rallies. He was in charge of presidential security then, head of the team, sleeping in a room two doors down from the president while they were on the road, sometimes napping in his suit on a bunk in the White House security office when they weren’t. Every day, somehow, some way, they both made time to box or run or hit the gym and it was stifling, the proximity, how they were around each other all the damn time or at least Mike was around the president; the president himself had other things to focus on, of course, whereas what Mike had was him, watching him, protecting him, conversations all about him when he wasn’t actually talking to him. 

It was demented, how much time he spent just _watching_ him, like any moment a terrorist would pop out of thin air and take a shot and who knew, maybe they would. But when the president looked at him, goddamnit if terrorism wasn’t the furthest thing from his mind. Even if the tone of their conversation never strayed out of semi-professional banter, the president never looked at anyone else the way he looked at him. Mike needed to take a step back. He couldn’t, so he took a step forward instead. 

“What are you doing?” the president asked as he came a step or two too close in the White House gymnasium changing room, as they both stood there barefoot in sweatpants and tees, sweaty and dishevelled. 

Mike didn’t actually answer because he was damned if he knew, just stepped even closer still and made the president of the damn United States back right up against the tiled wall. Then he got closer, one hand at either side of the president’s shoulders against the tile and the president frowned as he looked at him. Mike thought maybe his smile was a shade the wrong side of manic but at least the president hadn’t called in reinforcements. 

Then he kissed him. Not twenty feet away from three armed agents of the United States Secret Service and the press secretary who was circling like a vulture, he kissed the president, laid one on him like he meant it. And two seconds later he was down on his ass on the floor, rubbing his jaw. 

“I guess that answers that question,” he said, looking up with a half-hearted kind of rueful smile.

The president, on the other hand, looked flat-out amused. He held out his hand and Mike took it, came back up to his feet with a groan. 

“I’m pretty sure that doesn’t even _begin_ to answer the question,” he said. “Unless that question is _what happens when strange guys try to make out with the president in a locker room?_ ” He chuckled, rubbing his knuckles. “I think I broke my hand on your jaw.”

“I think you broke my jaw on your hand,” Mike said, rubbing said jaw. 

Then the president laughed and he turned to leave, glancing back at him over his shoulder, flashing a smile. “A little warning next time,” he said, and then he _did_ leave. 

Mike was left standing there wondering what the hell had just hit him, other than the President of the United States of America.

***

They’d been heading toward it, dancing around it, for months before it happened. 

Benjamin Asher won his second term in office and from Mike’s point of view it hadn’t even been really all that hard fought. Of course, Mike’s perspective had previously involved the destruction of half the White House and more deaths than he really cared to recall, so maybe his viewpoint was a little skewed, but the president seemed pretty calm the whole way through, just a little tired, a little worn around the edges of his immaculate suits. It wasn’t until week two of term two that Mike realised the reason was he wasn’t sleeping. 

He’d drawn a night shift for the first time in months, something to do with another agent’s wife going into labour and he guessed that qualified as a pretty good reason to blow off his shift and get someone else to cover. So Mike sat there in the corridor outside the president’s bedroom and he took the night shift. 

He had a walkie talkie on one hip, his gun holstered at the other shoulder and a sports magazine someone had given him to pass the time but the time was passing slowly. All he could think about was the fact he was fifteen feet and a wall away from the president, the president who still had no new first lady, who hadn’t even dated, who was in there in bed alone. And that would’ve been fine, would’ve been perfectly fine, except the president just happened to be a guy he’d kissed in a locker room and some of the thoughts he was having about his boss, his boss’s boss, the _nation’s_ damn boss, had nothing to do with duty. He couldn’t even convince himself it was PTSD. Maybe he’d just lost it. 

Then the president yelled and Mike was there in a second, through the door, gun in hand. But the light came on just like it had the time before and Mike holstered his gun. The president sat up, sat back against the headboard and ran one hand over his short hair and then his face. Mike got it. Hell, they were both having dreams. They were both tired. He didn’t have to question it. 

“Are you staying or going?” the president asked. 

Mike frowned. “Sir?”

He gestured to the door. “In or out, just close the door.”

And so Mike, for no discernible reason, not even against his better judgement because judgement never entered into it, closed the door and shut himself inside the president’s bedroom. With the president. In bed. It wasn’t actually until he saw the look of surprise on the president’s face that he realised exactly what he’d done. 

“Interesting choice,” the president said, his surprise blending into amusement. 

“Sir, I--”

“Don’t apologise.”

He almost let himself back out of the room, almost had his hand on the handle of the door he’d just closed, but somehow something stopped him. The president was looking at him from the bed, looking right at him as if weighing up his choices because Mike knew that look, had seen it on his face in all of the big meetings. Benjamin Asher was a smart guy, a tough guy, a leader. _His_ leader. The leader of the free world had just turned his analytical eye on him and it was hard not to feel like he was under a microscope. 

“Mr President?”

The president laughed. “If you’re going to be in my bedroom you’d better call me Ben,” he said. 

“Mr President…”

The president left the bed and Mike watched him approach just like none of his Secret Service training meant a damn at all. He let him walk right up to him, barefoot and pyjama-clad, let him step up close just like Mike had done those months before the election. Mike took two steps back and found himself up against the door; the president wasn’t quite his height but the guy wasn’t small and even if he had been it wasn’t like he could punch the president in the face and not wake up in a cell. And, he guessed, he’d gotten himself into this. He should’ve transferred to the VP at the first hint of trouble. He wasn’t fantasising about the VP and then lying to himself about it like a total asshole. It would’ve been a whole hell of a lot simpler. 

But then the president’s mouth was on his and _simple_ suddenly seemed like all the bad ideas in the world. 

He left pretty soon after, a mumbled apology, a look of something not unlike alarm and tried not to think about the fact that for a moment he’d had his hands tucked in under the president’s pyjamas, palms resting there at his lower back. He tried not to think about a thin layer of cotton doing nothing to hide the president’s incipient arousal, about what his own dumbass body had wanted in response and how fast he’d had to hightail it out of there to stop himself doing something stupid. Stupider. 

He wondered why he’d left. He _knew_ why he’d left. But his head kept going back to the president and what he might be doing then behind closed doors while Mike sat in the corridor and waited impatiently for morning. 

***

Two days off and he was back in; two days avoiding early morning boxing matches with the president by playing Xbox and drinking beer and definitely not jerking off in the shower to the idea of making out with Benjamin fucking Asher. There was too much crap between them, the White House attack, the first lady’s death, not to mention the fact he was the motherfucking _president_. Mike had really gone and gotten himself into trouble this time. 

Two days off then he went back in and he tried pretty damn hard to act like nothing had happened, tried really hard and for the first three days it was easy because that was how the president played it, too. Right up until he didn’t. 

They finished boxing, had the other agents help them out of their gloves then headed to the showers like they always did, alone. They stripped off sweaty clothes and stepped in under showers and then even past the din of the spray he could hear the president’s dramatic sigh. 

“Look, you have to transfer,” he said. 

“Sir, if I’ve not done my job--”

“You’ve done your job, Mike. You know what this is about.” Mike guessed he did. “I’d leave but the house kind of comes with the job.”

Mike chuckled despite himself and shot him a sidelong glance, the sort of glance he’d been avoiding giving for the best part of a year by that point. The chuckle died. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead down against chilly white shower tiles; he was pretty sure he’d have a hard-on the size of the fricking Eiffel Tower in no time at all if he didn’t.

“What if I _don’t_ transfer?” he said. “What if I stick around?”

He knew it was a dumb idea. He knew he should go and logically he knew he had to be the one to go because hell, the other guy was the president. Maybe he could transfer to the VP after all or maybe Connor’s details - Connor was a smart kid but he needed real protection. But, stubbornly, he didn’t want to go. 

“Then you need to look at me,” the president said, and his tone of voice, dark and thick, made Mike pretty sure he did and didn’t want to look. But he’d never been a goddamn fraidycat before and so he opened his eyes and he looked. 

“Jesus,” he said, and clamped his hand over his mouth to keep from saying any more. The president had his dick in his hand. He was hard and soaked from the shower and watching him as he stroked himself, faintly awkward like he’d been talking himself up to this but insistent with it. Mike was pretty spectacularly unsurprised to find his own sex twitched to life in response as he stared, _stared_ , like he'd never seen a naked guy in his life.

They’d been dancing around it for months before Mike stalked over there, took the president’s cock in his hand and stroked him till he came in the showers like that was sensible somehow. He’d been trying to ignore it till the president knelt down on the wetroom floor and took him in his mouth, just occasionally leaning back to bitch up at him about his knees, making Mike laugh breathlessly under the spray. After that, after seeing that and feeling that. it was pretty monumentally hard to ignore. 

“Have breakfast,” the president said, on Mike’s next day off. Mike politely declined the first three times like somehow jacking each other off in the showers every morning made more sense than breakfast, but when he worked out the damn guy wasn’t going to take no for an answer he sat down there with the president in the residence and ate jam and toast and felt like he’d fucked up his whole job in one fell swoop before the president had to get on and get away and start the day. He thought he’d never get used to it but a couple of weeks, three, and he was there while on duty, too, not eating but loitering in a pseudo-service way by the door, shooting the breeze with the president like that was normal and hell, for them he guessed it was. 

“Come to dinner,” the president said, on his next day off. Mike politely declined the first three times and then he gave in again like an ass. He turned up in the early evening of his next day off and they ate together in the residence and it was different, really different, having dinner instead of breakfast like somehow bacon and steak marked different thresholds. Breakfast was an extra half hour after a workout but dinner meant a special visit, meant the president tearing himself away from work, was, well, _dinner_. He realised as the president leaned over to pour him a second glass of wine that really, he wasn’t reading too much into it. If anything he’d not read enough. 

“This is a date,” he said, when realisation finally dawned. 

The president looked up from his fillet steak with an amused smile and a steak knife in one hand that he used to gesticulate in the air as he spoke. “Mike, I hate to break it to you,” he said, “but we’ve been pretty much dating for months.”

When he thought about it, he guessed they had. 

***

Mike transferred to Secret Service HQ two weeks later and reluctantly let someone else take on the president’s security. After his first day, he drove over to the White House. Security let him into the residence. He was waiting there when the president came in from the Oval Office just over an hour later, sitting there on the couch watching cartoons that he muted when the door opened. 

“Ben,” he said. 

“I found out you transferred this morning. You might’ve told me.”

“Ben,” he repeated. 

“What did you think I’d say, exactly?”

“ _Ben_.”

And then the president stopped, and he paused, and he looked at him, really _looked_ at him. Mike could pinpoint the exact second that it dawned on him, that realisation set in and his brows crawled up toward his hairline. 

“You called me--”

Mike shrugged, smiled, easy like a weight had lifted. “Well, I can’t date a guy I have to salute in the morning,” he said. 

They knew it was going to be complicated. They ate dinner that night and laughed but they were giving each other dumbass furtive glances like each was checking the other’s resolve as the evening went on. Neither one flinched, not even when they moved from sitting room to bedroom, even when Ben asked him to stay the night. They knew there’d be no way, no way at all, to explain it away if he did. Mike stayed the night anyway. 

Of course, that night they were both scared so absolutely shitless by the idea of what they were doing that erections vanished as soon as they arrived and left them laughing at each other in a tangle of limbs in the bed Ben hadn’t shared with anyone since his wife. It’d be a night that launched a thousand news reports and no one would ever know they’d done pretty much nothing at all, only get themselves worked up for nothing and snicker at each other as they watched cartoons till they fell asleep. Mike hadn’t realised how easy it would be, once his job stopped getting in the way.

The next morning the story was still so new and so totally unsubstantiated by any actual evidence, so totally insane that no one had run with it and so there was little stopping Mike from coming back in the evening and settling down in the residence, no cameras, no press at the gate. They had nothing like the same problems that night; they flipped a coin to decide who got to be on top the first time, like that was a sensible tool for decision making, and then they went into the bedroom. 

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” Mike admitted, unbuttoning Ben’s shirt. 

Ben chuckled. “I wish I’d had time,” he said, toeing off his shoes. “But the British prime minister didn’t seem interested in my sex life.” Mike just rolled his eyes.

As they lost their clothes somewhere between dining table and bed, Mike wondered which poor unfortunate aide had been sent out for condoms and lube because it wasn’t like the president could just take a quick trip on down to the drugstore. Ben watched him as he fucked up rolling on the first condom, asked him how long it’d been then laughed and did it for him. It _had_ been a while, for them both.

Nothing much else was funny after that - Mike pushed into him on hands and knees feeling like the star of the world’s weirdest porno then nothing was funny because the whole thing was so damn hot. He brought Ben up on his knees, his back pressed to Mike’s chest and it was the weirdest, hottest thing to be so damn close to him, skin on skin like that. He brought one hand to Ben’s cock and brought him off that way, the two of them breathless and leaning into each other. They forewent the workout in the morning and did it again instead, this time with Ben on top and Mike goading him the whole time like he needed any encouragement. It really wasn’t why Mike had gotten into the Secret Service but with his smart mouth and Ben’s smart actions it wasn’t the worst reason he could think of.

And then the story broke and everything went to hell. 

***

Death threats quadrupled overnight. Three countries started refusing to deal with the US just on the principle of the thing. There were reporters _everywhere_ like it was the biggest tabloid scandal ever and Mike guessed in a way it was; when the White House press secretary went out in front of the press corps and told them _yes, the president is dating a person of the same sex_ , it caused total holy uproar. Mike half expected to wake up in the middle of the night and find someone else had taken a potshot at the White House to rid the nation of its first not-entirely-straight president. But somehow, in spite of Mike’s doubts, it didn’t happen. Whenever he was woken in the night it was just a dream, his or Ben’s, and they’d talk or they’d fool around till they felt like sleep again.

They went on as normal, got on with their jobs and they didn’t talk about the threats or the way Mike’s colleagues were all making jokes about that not being the way most of them served the office of the president while he told them jovially to go fuck themselves. Presidential security was tightened then but even if the press liked to follow him around Mike was pretty sure he was able to deal with his own security himself; he was carrying a gun and working for the Secret Service for Christ’s sake. He still is. Right now, weeks later, lying on the president’s bed like he owns it, he’s still carrying his gun. He keeps it loaded at all times, ready for the worst case scenario while Ben tries for the best.

“Time to face the music,” Ben says, and Mike makes a song and dance of getting himself up off of the bed. Ben steps in and frowns and fusses at his tie like Mike knew he would. And then they leave the room, and they go out, and they go down the stairs to the state dinner. All eyes are on them as they walk in; Mike has to resist the urge to hang back just a couple of steps, scanning the crowd. He’ll be Secret Service till he dies, he thinks, but Ben looks at him and he looks at Ben and they walk down side by side, flash each other a smile as cameras flash at them. That’s tomorrow’s headline shot right there, Asher and Banning on the front page.

Three months and this is the first time they’ve been seen together in public. Mike thinks it ought to be more awkward. 

Fifteen minutes and Ben’s pulled away by his chief of staff just for a minute and then it _is_ awkward, all eyes on him as he sips not terribly delicately from his glass of champagne. He’s never exactly been the graceful creature the first lady was; he’s more at home on an assault course with a rifle than in a formerly well-pressed suit awaiting a banquet. Ben told him he’d get used to it; he wasn’t so sure. 

“Looking sharp, Mike,” Connor says, nudging him in the ribs with one elbow. He’s got a smile on his face and looks happy to be there, not his first official occasion but he’s still pretty new to the scene so maybe he’s just not tired of it yet. He leans in nearer, conspiratorial. “You’ll make a bad-ass first gentleman.”

Mike laughs out loud at that and then Ben’s there again and Mike loops an arm around his shoulders, onlookers be damned. Ben’s arm settles at Mike’s waist, over the small of his back, and he doesn’t say a thing about the way Mike’s shoulder-holstered gun presses into his ribs and okay, so maybe Mike _is_ a bit of a bad-ass. But it feels easy. It feels comfortable. 

They’ll go into the dining room together soon and they’ll sit there side by side, they’ll make small talk with whichever ambassadors and partners they’ve been seated with and people will stare and Mike won’t give a damn. Later, they’ll go upstairs and they’ll take off their suits and Mike will hang up his gun and they’ll go to bed, fool around till they’re tired enough to sleep or talk about the crap Mike’s still got clearance to know because of his job even if he doesn't work in the White House. Ben asked him to move in a couple of days ago, over dinner, like moving into the White House isn’t a big deal; he thinks he’ll make him ask another couple of times before he gives in, or maybe he’ll agree before they go to sleep tonight then face the music in the morning.

Maybe they’ll dream tonight, maybe he will or Ben will or they both will like it’s that day all over again. Maybe they’ll dream about it for the rest of their lives. But they’ll get through the second term together, just like they’ve done before, and then they'll see what happens.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest 17. The prompt used here is: "Bad Ass" First Gentleman?


End file.
